Surgeon ‘destroyed’ our lives claim four
A GROUP of women have filed formal complaints against underreview surgeon Daniel Hay for procedures he performed up to 15 years ago. And they are asking why they were not listened to when they raised concerns about his surgery as early as 2006.
The four patients, who do not wish to be publicly identified, have all lodged complaints to the General Medical Council, which is responsible for registering medical practitioners.
Dr Hay is currently “registered without a licence to practise” as of July 23, with restrictions attached, but could rejoin the register at a later date, with his licence still intact.
Law firm Slater and Gordon filed the complaints on behalf of the women in late April.
The women claim their treatment by Dr Hay has left them with mental and physical trauma that they continue to struggle with to this day, saying the gynaecologist “destroyed” their lives. This has caused them avoid intimate relationships and public appearances, severely damaged their confidence and left them suffering post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms.
The doctor’s work with some former patients is being reviewed by the NHS, a process which the women describe as reawakening “painful memories” and a “vicious circle of anxiety” but they are willing to share their stories to help others.
The women say the experiences they have had with Dr Hay have critically affected their trust of the medical profession. They say they put their full trust in Dr Hay and this was “betrayed”.
The women say if they had been listened to and if people had taken action more than a decade ago, the “needless” and “unnecessary” harm caused to dozens of patients may have been avoided.
Dr Hay, who lives in Derbyshire, is under investigation by NHS England, the GMC and the University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust.
The NHS England and hospital trust reviews are limited to the period 2015 to 2018. The GMC will not say if it has ever received complaints about Dr Hay or how many complaints it has received, but is conducting its own investigation into the surgeon, who has now retired.
The Local Democracy Reporting Service has taken its request for information from the GMC on complaints about Dr Hay to the Information Commissioner.
One of the women in question, from Leicestershire and now in her 60s, complained to the GMC in January 2006 about care she received from Dr Hay while he was working in Chesterfield.
In early December, 2006, the GMC concluded that the patient’s complaint would not see Dr Hay referred
to a fitness to practise panel, which would have seen him thoroughly examined and could have seen him suspended. A request for a review was also refused.
She said: “The treatment received from Dr Hay has led to long-term physical detriment. Worst of all was the betrayal of trust and the outcome of the GMC investigation.
“This had a severely detrimental impact on my psychological wellbeing. In short, I felt as though I could not trust the medical profession.
“The whole experience broke my sense of confidence and self esteem. The experience changed me as a person. I felt as though I would never be believed. In short, it destroyed my life.”
The woman in question was treated by Dr Hay between 2002 and 2004 while he was working as an obstetrics and gynaecology consultant at Chesterfield Royal Hospital and at BMI Chesterfield Suite, a private facility. She was suffering from
endometriosis, a condition where tissue similar to the lining of the womb starts to grow in other places, such as the ovaries and fallopian tubes.
The woman in question claims Dr Hay put undue pressure on her to have a hysterectomy.
Dr Hay eventually performed keyhole surgery to remove adhesions, after which she suffered haemorrhaging. Despite this, Dr Hay sent her home. The patient says Dr Hay continued to exert pressure on her to have a hysterectomy. Later, the patient suffered a serious haemorrhage and was readmitted as an emergency to stem the bleeding.
It is claimed Dr Hay continued to exert pressure on the patient and it was “only due to the intervention of another consultant who took over the case”, and performed further keyhole surgery with insertion of a Merina coil (a contraceptive inserted into the womb), which finally resolved the woman’s problems.
The woman said: “Dr Hay’s treatment, and the events that followed destroyed both my career and my family. Having had a very successful career taking me across Europe, the health complications following treatment and the severe blow delivered to my confidence meant travelling and being in the public eye became impossible. To this day, I still find it impossible to do so much as drive my own car.”
When asked how she felt after seeing Dr Hay in the news as the subject of a review into his practice, she said: “I was gutted, less for my own sake but more for the fact that what we had said 18 years ago had clearly come to pass in that women have continued to suffer at his hands when the people with the power to prevent it had completely failed to listen. These women have suffered needlessly.
“When I heard in the press that NHS England were investigating I did feel a certain measure of relief, that after all this time we might see some justice served. However, that relief was short lived when it was revealed that the inquiry would only be considering a three-year time span between 2015 and 2018.
Asked what she would like to see happen as a result of the ongoing investigation from NHS England, the GMC and the University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust, she said: “For the irreparable harm he has caused untold numbers of women, he should both lose his licence and be held accountable to a court for his malpractice across his 20-plus year history, as chronicled by so many women who have shared similar experiences to my own.”
One of the other women who have had their complaints filed with the GMC, from Derbyshire, says she was “shocked to the core” to receive a letter from the Derby and Burton trust admitting it provided her “with a standard of care much lower than they expect”.
She said: “It brought back so many painful memories that my nightmares manifested themselves again and it began a vicious circle of anxiety and reliving the events, both around and immediately after the event. I became reclusive and needed quite long periods off work to cope with all of the feelings and memories flooding back.
“I have been living a nightmare – I just want it to be all over and settled. I want to rebuild my life again.”
She said: “At the time of treatment I had genuinely thought I could trust the man to have my best interests at heart. To then wake from surgery and it had all gone wrong, impacted on me in several ways.
“I have terrible scarring that is not just a physical issue, but has affected my relationships dramatically. I am extremely aware of the scars and what they represent. Physically the scars are very mentally debilitating and I avoid intimacy and full length mirrors. The scars have caused me to hate my reflection.
“Mentally I have lost all faith in putting my trust in any gynaecology specialists. I have some ongoing issues which I am not confident to get help with – my trust has been destroyed.
“I have a broken relationship on the back of how the incident affected me, my mood swings and other PTSD symptoms left me unbearable.
“Things have been difficult and I wish I had never been referred to him in the first place – but I needed the surgery and couldn’t carry on in that much pain.”
On what she would like to see come from the review, she said: “I would like to see Mr Hay take responsibility for his actions. I want him to stand before a court and explain, this would give the women he harmed some closure. I personally want to know why.
“Ultimately I would hope that the conclusion would be that Mr Hay would be banned from practising ever again.”